Mariah Carey – "Almost Home"

This week saw the iTunes release of “Almost Home”, Mariah Carey’s single for Disney’s upcoming Oz: The Great and Powerful. A painfully repetitive hook murmured over a watered down stock photo of a dubstep beat, Carey’s latest effort matches that of a Taylor Swift B-side without room for mention of a seventh-grade boyfriend. If “Almost Home” is any indicator of what to expect from both the film and Carey’s 14th studio album (both set to drop next month) I’m wondering where the greatness or power are sowing themselves. Not since the darkness of the Glitter era has Mariah become so foreign to me. Where is the GUINNESS WORLD RECORD HOLDING eight-octave vocal range of my youth? The woman who literally bathed on the most legendary Cribs episode in the MTV canon? I understand Mariah has aged gracefully in her mysterious co-optation of raising Nick Cannon’s twin spawn, but will I ever again see her wistfully gliding over a lake on a rope swing, the gentle moonlight illuminating the indigo hues of her Canadian tuxedo? This will never be the Mariah Carey I force my hypothetical children to harmonize with. I choose to answer Judy Garland’s seminal “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with Carey’s own Rainbow, the 1999 “Heartbreaker” smash. “Almost Home” can follow that yellow-brick-road all the way back to Kansas, where it inevitably crawled out of a wayward Train fan’s Avicii-inspired GarageBand discography.

If you really must listen to the single, it can be found here. Oz: The Great and Powerful is slated for release on March 8.

-Emily Manning

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